A cell is a basic unit of a conventional cellular network, a user terminal selects a specific cell as a serving cell, and the serving cell is responsible for user management and data transmission. A user terminal at a cell edge is in an environment in which a signal of a serving cell is weak and interference from a neighboring cell is strong. In a conventional technology, a signal of a neighboring cell is considered as an interference signal. An interference coordination or interference cancellation technology is used to weaken the signal of the neighboring cell, so as to improve signal quality of an edge user. In addition, to improve system efficiency and provide a high-speed service, a future cellular network is deployed with miniaturized and intensive base stations. Each cell serves a smaller coverage area with a lower power, and a cell spacing is obviously reduced (a typical value is less than 100 meters). In an intensive deployment network, a neighboring cell interference problem is extremely complex. A boundary between a center and an edge of a cell is more vague, and this means that more user terminals are at the cell edge. In addition, a quantity of neighboring cells is increased, and this means that an edge user is interfered by more neighboring cells.
Different from the conventional technology, in a multi-point transmission technology, a neighboring cell and a serving cell jointly serve an edge user terminal, and the neighboring cell that is conventionally considered as an interference source is converted into a useful data source. This can obviously improve channel quality of the edge user, or the edge user terminal can use multiple cell resources at the same time, so as to increase a throughput of the edge user terminal. Compared with the conventional interference coordination or interference cancellation technology, the multi-point transmission technology has an obvious gain, and can obviously improve edge user performance and obtain good overall network performance. At present, multi-point transmission in a 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) standard mainly includes two mechanisms: coordinated multi-point (CoMP) and dual connectivity (DC). A common characteristic of the CoMP and the DC is that multiple cells including a serving cell and a neighboring cell jointly serve an edge user terminal.
When multi-point transmission is used in an actual network, a backhaul resource of each adjacent station may limit a capability of the adjacent station to participate in multi-point transmission. For example, in an intensive deployment network, backhaul resources of some cells may be insufficient, and this lowers multi-point transmission efficiency. Therefore, how to determine a resource of each cell for participating in multi-point transmission is a key to improvement of the multi-point transmission efficiency.